On Bended Knee, page 27
part #6 of Wicked Worthingtons Series
He scrambled awkwardly to his feet and reached to drag Theo up as well. He pointed to the distant British flag still visible in the growing dusk. "Run!"
They ran for their lives, mud-filled boots sloshing, mud-caked clothing flapping, their mud-slimed hair standing on end. Their situation was deadly serious, for cannonballs fired upward, rising nearly to the castle heights, arced down to hit the ground with an earth-shaking impact and then bounced on at high velocity, ricocheting off in unpredictable directions. Despite the danger, they laughed like bedlamites as they slipped and sloshed and flapped across the battleground, headed for their own line which stood firm just out of the range of the cannon fire.
They were close, not more than fifty yards away. Theo, always just a hairsbreadth faster, looked back over his shoulder at Zander with a punch-drunk grin.
Zander laughed back at him. Then, inexplicably Theo plunged toward Zander and shoved hard, knocking him right off his feet. Zander fell backward, hands reaching out wide to break his fall. Time seemed to slow as he flew. He saw Theo trying to fling himself aside. He saw the black iron sphere of the cannonball strike Theo in the side and break him like a stick, snapping him double in a way that was never meant to be. Then time sped up again and Theo was flung away into the smoke and rain and disappeared from view.
The battle raged on. Darkness, aided by the heavy cloud cover, fell early on the castle grounds. Still the bombardment continued.
Zander crawled through the mud until he found someone. It wasn't Theo. Pale, mud-streaked fingers reached for him, blood flowing in an ever widening pool beneath the fallen form. Zander hesitated, but the outstretched hand fell and the blood stopped spurting.
Poor bastard, Zander thought as he continued his search. It wouldn't be long before he would conclude that the dead man was one of the lucky ones.
Twice cannon fire struck near Zander as he crawled and searched. Both times he fell facedown to the ground with his hands protecting his head, rather like a butterfly trying to fend off hailstones with its wings.
The first impact left him unscathed. The second shattered a wooden munitions cart abandoned near him and the impact showered him with piercing daggers of wood.
Zander ignored his various punctures and crawled onward. He turned around and backtracked twice before he found him. Theo lay in an earthen crater left by a cannonball fired from a great height.
"Oh God. Theo!" When he saw his friend, Zander had to drop his forehead to the ground for a moment, flinching from the sight of his mangled body. Theo was dead.
"Zander? Zander?"
Zander scrambled up on all fours again. "Theo?"
How could Theo be alive when he lay shattered and distorted on the ground? His arms and legs splayed out limply and his body twisted wildly at the pelvis. Zander had never seen anything so broken.
ZANDER SCRAMBLED DOWN INTO the shallow cavity to his friend. The rain came down hard enough to pound his skin but still the cannons fired.
"Theo?" Zander reached to touch his friend, then stopped. There seem to be nowhere on Theo's body that wasn't scraped, stabbed, or shattered.
At least he could shield Theo from the pounding rain. Zander crouched over him, angling his body to take the worst of the rain on his back and shoulders.
Theo's eyes were shut, his muddy face gray and his lips blue with shock. Zander dug through his pockets. In a deep inner pocket of his coat he found folded sheaf of paper that was still clean within the folds. The tunnel specifications. He drawn them himself two days ago. Zander turned one of the clean inner pages into a towel to wipe Theo's face free of mud and blood.
Theo's eyes opened. "Zander?" Then his eyes widened horribly as his mouth stretched in a rictus of agony. He drew in a harsh gasping breath. Zander could hear broken ribs creaking as he did.
And then the screams began.
There was nothing Zander could do. He had nothing to give his friend, not even the last dregs of his whiskey flask, which now lay buried under tons of Spanish mud.
Theo screamed until he lost consciousness again. Zander had a brief thought that the sound might reveal their presence to the enemy but with the thunder and continuing cannon fire there seemed little point in worrying for his own skin.
It was not fear for himself that made him weep when Theo lost consciousness. It was relief that now his friend had respite from the pain. Zander shielded his friend and swore that he would stay by Theo's side until he died.
But Theo didn't die. He woke up, and the screams began anew. He pawed at Zander with one misshapen hand. The other was a useless dead limb, shattered in so many places that it curled and shimmied in a dreadful boneless manner as Theo's body spasmed in pain.
Zander held Theo in his arms then, for he could hardly hurt him any worse. He sang and spoke nonsense, reciting Shakespeare's bloody Twelfth Night when he ran out of words of his own. It was stupid to think Theo could hear him through such hellish agony, but Zander refused to crawl away in the dark and the rain, to flee from the ghastly scene. Theo would never leave him. Zander could not abandon Theo while he yet lived.
Six or seven or a hundred hours later, the cannonade had stopped and the storm had moved on, although a steady rain still fell. Zander left Theo's unconscious side for a moment to look over the crumbling edge of their inadvertent foxhole. He could tell which cook fires were French and which were British by the lantern light up on the ramparts of Castel Burgos, as the Spanish called it.
Zander turned away from the enemy and gazed wistfully at the British line. He pondered the wisdom of moving Theo, if he even could. He himself been leaking a bit here and there from his gashes. The struggle against the heavy mud had left him drained.
The ground was wet and slick. Could he put Theo on their combined uniform coats and drag him across it? He realized he could only use his own coat. He was horribly certain that Theo's snug uniform was the only thing holding his torso together in one piece.
The British line was far and the medical tents farther yet. Rumor abounded that after nearly four weeks of siege and high casualties, there was no more morphine, no laudanum, not even a drop of spirits to get a man too blind drunk to feel the amputation of his legs. There was no real succor there for the severely wounded. There were only the blood-spattered blankets on which the men screamed all night and all day until they died.
The entire company had heard the agony coming from those tents, where it was known that the doctors were playing only the safest odds. By necessity, only the men sure to recover were being treated at all. The others were laid out side by side across the tent floor and given water if they could swallow it.
Those doctors would have nothing to give Theo after he went through the torture just to journey across fifty yards. Zander put his face into his cold, water-wrinkled hands and wept for Theo, who wasn't dead.
He heard Theo gasp himself into wakefulness and quickly rejoined his friend, feeling his way in the darkness. He wiped his wet face on his sleeve to conceal his weeping, then realized the foolishness of hiding tears in the rain.
"I'm here, Theo, I'm here." Zander reached to hold his friend as gently as he could to warm him and to provide comfort, even if Theo was too far gone to know it.
This time Theo met Zander's return with words. "Die!" he gasped.
Zander's gut turned to ice. "Yes." He would not lie to Theo. "You are going to die."
Theo's broken hand spasmed toward Zander's. "Die. Now!" Then the screams began to build up beyond Theo's ability to control them, seeping from his broken jaw in a rasping mewling sound that Zander felt all the way to his bones. Theo had no voice left. His screams were naught but long, rasping gasps. It seemed even more obscene that Theo should be robbed of his rightful expression of his agony.
"Now!" Theo insisted before losing his wits to the agony that ripped through him as he screamed himself breathless and then senseless once more.
Zander held him through it all. And now when Zander wept, he gave up tears for them both — for he had never had the will to refuse Theo anything. He pulled Theo's cravat free of his collar and twisted it into a thick cord. Then he waited. For the next quarter of an hour or so, Theo would lie quietly, unconscious from exhaustion before the torment began again.
For this brief time, Zander would hold his oldest and dearest friend in his arms and whisper silly tales about Miss Maisie Sinclair.
For these last short moments, Zander could continue to exist as a man who had not yet murdered his dearest friend.
Chapter 28
LYSANDER LOOKED UP FROM his hands, which were twisting his own cravat, wrapping and unwrapping around his fists. When had he taken it off?
As the words had come at last, they had begun to flow. His tongue had not faltered much after the beginning. He had relived every moment of that nightmarish day and night as he'd spoken. Never once had he looked at Gemma's face. He didn't want to know. He'd made his confession but he did not feel absolved, for all that his tongue had loosened at last.
He missed Theo, suddenly and fiercely, in a way his frozen emotions had never yet allowed him to. Death had come for Theo. All his lively wit and youthful strength had not been enough to spare him.
Lysander had no reason to expect better from his own life. He yet breathed. He had a family that truly wished to embrace him again. There was a woman whom Lysander loved with the entirety of his patchwork-mended heart, regardless of how she might feel about him.
These were things that Theo would never have. Lysander could not beg Theo's forgiveness and there was no one else with the right to pardon him.
What he wished from Gemma was her own whole heart. Not to give to him, but to have for herself.
No matter how he feared what he might now spy upon her beautiful face, that confession had not been to her, it had been for her. He must finish this whilst she still listened. "Your choice was to save life, don't you see? My choice was to take it. Those were not the same acts at all."
GEMMA FELT AS IF her body was frozen. Even her thoughts felt slushy and cold, spiked with icy crystals of shock.
In a strange way, Mr. Worthington's confession had accomplished its mission. She now understood the difference between a poor medical decision and murder.
She had been arrogant and irresponsible, so sure that her book-fed knowledge made her a better midwife. She'd forgotten that her practical experience was based on battlefield surgery, gunshot wounds and broken bones.
She'd made one decision and Jennie had died. If she'd made another decision, Jennie may have lived but she might never have recovered from the loss of her child. Gemma now understood that for all her flaws of ignorance and arrogance, she was not a killer.
But Mr. Worthington was.
Dr. Edmund Oakes had been militant that a physician should never do harm, never take life, no matter how dire the circumstances. Edmund would abhor a man such as Mr. Worthington.
"Life is sacred to me," she said hoarsely. Her voice sounded rough and strained coming from a throat so frozen with sorrow. "I'm a healer. It is all I believe in."
You believed in it so much that you ignored the danger signs — Jennie's red face, her puffy ankles, her terrible thirst — so that you could dance with this man and play lovers' games on the study carpet.
That was nothing less than undeniable truth. Raw and heartbroken, Gemma absorbed that fact, taking the blow as one well deserved. She hadn’t seen Jennie's ailment in time, for she had been too distracted by the hint of spring in her life after so many years of winter.
Yes. Of that I am guilty as well.
"You took the life of your closest friend," she whispered. The hideous irony was not lost on her. So had she. Oh, Jennie! What I wouldn't do to go back and undo it all! Turn away the stranger, stay focused on my duty — then surely I would have recognized your illness in time!
Mr. Worthington just kept twisting his cravat in his hands, twisting and tightening it. "Yes."
Then he seemed to comprehend his own horrible gesture and he flung the worn-out length of linen away. Gemma watched it unfurl and float to the grass, to lie there like a flag of surrender on a field of green.
I don't want to know this. I don't want to look at his hands and think of them taking a life, of killing a helpless man. The hands that touched me.
It was all too much. Too much truth. Too much death.
What had she done?
She'd been foolish. Believing that she could toss aside her responsibilities for springtime romp with a handsome stranger? A man she know nothing about?
That was part of the appeal, surely. Not knowing him, she could paint him with the brush of fantasy. She could pick and choose the facets that she wished to see and excuse or ignore the sides of him that didn't fit into her creation.
Then she'd flung herself headlong and foolish into his arms, fleeing her isolation and her burdens.
Deserting her duty and responsibility.
She had been better off living her life alone, assiduously focused on caring for her people. That seemingly dreary life had been calmer. Simpler. Safer. At this moment, she longed to have it back, to return to the way things had been.
It had been a tragic, lethal distraction to want something for herself. All the remorse in the world would not bring Jennie back, not let her raise her children, grow old with the man she loved, someday hold her grandchildren in her arms.
Oh, to have her life back the way it was before!
"You should go." The words came tumbling from her lips, spurred by her fervent wish that she'd never laid eyes upon him in the first place. "Leave with your family and friends. Go back to where you came from and leave me behind you."
LYSANDER DID NOT FLINCH from the blow. As surely as he knew he loved Gemma, he understood why she could not love him. His darkness was anathema to her light.
He wanted nothing more than to stand fast, to fight for her if he could, to win her heart against any opponent — but who was the enemy, if not he himself and all the troubles he had laid at her door?
There was only one more thing that she deserved to know.
"I love you, Gemma Oaks." He could hear the naked longing in his rusted voice, but he did not spare himself. "I love your strength. I love your healing heart. I comprehend your loneliness. I understand you."
She flinched and stared down at her fisted hands. "What am I supposed to say to that?"
"Nothing." He could not reach out to her, for he knew he had blood on his hands. Now she knew it as well. "I only want you to believe this. Gemma, you can be loved. You are meant to be loved." He stood up, stepping back to allow her some distance. "I want you to be loved, even if it means by someone else — someone more worthy than I."
Then he turned away and headed toward the stable. It was time to hitch up the carriages and take the Worthingtons home to London.
Home.
Lysander felt torn in half, he who had not been whole to begin with. Yet even in his torment over leaving her, he could feel the healing Gemma had begun in him. I am battered, but I am not broken. Not anymore. She restored me.
He only wished that he could have given her something a fraction so valuable.
GEMMA HANDED TINY JASPER Gosling up to his eldest sister where she sat beside Shepherd Gosling on the bench seat of the open farm cart.
"I shall come to check in on him tomorrow, to be sure the sheep's milk agrees with him."
Shepherd Gosling nodded at her agreeably enough, although his sorrow hung dark and oppressive about him. All the Goslings were subdued but Gemma had to believe the family would survive. The elder Mrs. Gosling, a spry lady of fifty-six, waited back at the farm with the child who'd been too small to attend the assembly. She would love her grandchildren well. In addition, the community would enclose them all and Gemma would do everything she could. She'd made promises to Jennie that she'd not been able to keep. She owed her friend this.
The farm cart rattled away. The Worthington contingent, who had hung back respectfully, even Miss Atalanta, now stepped forward.
Mr. Button took her hand. "As sorry as I am for the tragic loss of Mrs. Gosling, I am not sorry to have met you, my dear. You shall serve as a mighty inspiration to me. It was an honor to boil water for you." His sincerity made his quirky way of speaking into something charming and insightful. He planted a kiss on her cheek. "Do call on me if ever you are in London."
Mr. Cabot was next. "Mrs. Oakes, thank you for your hospitality. Your dale is very beautiful." His words seem to encompass more than simply the landscape.
Gemma nodded. "Thank you. I think so, too."
Next came Mr. Pollux Worthington. He eyed her carefully, opened his mouth to say something, then shook his head as if refusing to say it. "Thank you. Thank you for helping Lysander. You've done wonders for him."
Gemma had not told a soul what Lysander had confessed to her. As difficult as it was to reflect upon what he had done, she would not betray his confidence. Instead, she took Pollux's hand. "Tell him that you want to listen. Then let him choose his words. Just listen." There, that was the last thing she could do for that particular patient before sending him home with his loved ones.
Pollux nodded, his brows, very much like Lysander's, knitting slightly. "Where is Zander?"
"Lysander," said Miss Atalanta in a reminding tone of voice. "He isn't Zander anymore, remember? And he's waiting in the lane."
Atalanta stepped up to Gemma. Gemma noticed that Pollux gave way before his little sister. Were there no adults in that house? Who was in charge there?
Not my concern, Gemma reminded herself as she looked expectantly at the fascinating but alarming Miss Atalanta Worthington.
"Lysander is special," Atalanta said bluntly. "Even for a Worthington. I don't just love him because he is my brother. I don't want him to stay here. I'm not even sure I like you. But you should know that Lysander is special."
